Another list post. D would be proud.
1. Get this addon
2. Restart Firefox
3. Go to the preferences for the addon.
4. In the box marked “Hide comments with _ or more spelling errors” set _ to 0
5. Get back to work.
I’m going to try to get my hands on the source for this, and generalize it to any site with comments.
“…we human beings live in a very peculiar fashion. We view impermanent things as permanent, though everything is changing all around us. The process of change is constant and eternal. Even as you read these words, your body is aging. But you pay no attention to that. The book in your hand is decaying. The print is fading, and the pages are becoming brittle. The walls around you are aging. The molecules within those walls are vibrating at an enormous rate, and everything is shifting, going to pieces, and slowly dissolving. You pay no attention to that either. Then one day you look around you. Your skin is wrinkled and your joints ache. The book is a yellowed, faded thing; and the building is falling apart. So you pine for lost youth, cry when your possessions are gone. Where does this pain come from? It comes from your own inattention. You failed to look closely at life. You failed to observe the constantly shifting flow of the world as it passed by. You set up a collection of mental constructions–”me,” “the book,” “the building”–and you assumed that those were solid, real entities. You assumed that they would endure forever. They never do.”
From Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante H. Gunaratana
1. Ride the overnight. It’s a gamble as to how much sleep you’ll get, but only being awake for half the ride and being tired is better than being bored stiff for 7 hours.
2. Bring the best earplugs you have/can afford.
3. Bring something to cover your eyes.
4. Get a window seat.
5. Bring a sweatshirt.
6. Wedge the sweatshirt between the window and the seat, then wedge your head on top of it.
7. Put the armrest between the seats down, so as to limit the amount of space your (inevitably) enormous companion can take up.
8. Remind yourself as frequently as necessary how much money you’re saving.
Last but not least, have eggs with your pop when you arrive.
First, why we’re screwed:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7416120.stm
Second,
If I catch any one of you riding you bicycle without a helmet I will be angry. And not the pretend kind of angry that makes D laugh. Actually angry, because you’re smarter than that. Everyone falls. Everyone.
For those not directly inside whitebread’s skull:
The last post is a reminder to myself that the current friends I have should be better appreciated because they won’t be with me forever either.
Apologies for any confusion.
-management
Sometimes I’m amazed at just how much I miss Carleton.
But would you really want to go back there, even if you could?
Time-machine style, with all my friends? Absolutely.
Now whitebread, you’re not remembering all the hard times and just cherrypicking…
No! Don’t you see? I’ve matured enough that if I could go back, any petty discontentment wouldn’t matter.
I’d appreciate all those friends for who they are, while I still had them, because I’d know those times wouldn’t last.
If I could just do it over again…
I realized this morning that the move will give me the opportunity to put my life in order, and that I should view it as such, instead of dreading it as was my original plan.
I attacked the box that has been in my closet for a year, harboring such stowaways as old batteries, sandpaper, various small tools, a broken calculator, screws, a needle, a penny…you get the idea.
Maybe this time I’ll actually manage to eliminate everything I don’t need. Well, everything except the cable bags. (Yes I have more than one now)
Americans are “hardly the first people to believe themselves favored by Providence, but they are the only ones in modern history who are convinced that by bringing their political and economic system to others, they are doing God’s work.
This view is driven by a profound conviction that the American form of government, based on capitalism and individual political choice, is, as President Bush asserted, ‘right and true for every person in every society.’ It rests on the belief that all will embrace it once the United States removes artificial barriers imposed by regimes based on other principles. By implication, it denies that culture and tradition shape the human psyche, that national consciousness changes only slowly, and that even great powers cannot impose their beliefs on others by force.
Early leaders of the United States did not hold this view. George Washington wrote that for nations, as for people, self-interest is always ‘the governing principle’ and that no country, specifically including the United States, should be ‘trusted further than it is bound by interest’.”
From page 315 of Overthrow, by Stephen Kinzer
You’re not the only one who gets afraid.
Just because I haven’t posted doesn’t mean I don’t care.
Maybe right now is a good time to be free.
All is change.
Write a letter to the governor:
in support of the light rail
Have pity for the children born today.